E f 
B(c>2 



^ 



LiQcoIn 




Class i~ ^^hT 



Book 



Gopig]it]^^_I&.^^^ 



CORailGHT DEPOSm 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

AN ADDRESS BY 

CLARK PRESCOTT BISSETT 

I) 

PROFESSOR OF LAW 
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON 
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON 




LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 

CANNELL SMITH CHAFFIN COMPANY 

MDCCCCXVI 



^;^6zf- 



corrwGHT 1916 

BT 
CASXEli SMITH CHAFrIX C?lfPAXy 



i^ 



SEP -5 1916 



ICIA437555 



— 1/«^ , 



To ]VIr. J. D. Farrell, these simple words 
are dedicated as a token of my respect and 
affection ; as a slight evidence of mj' ever 
increasing gratitude for his friendship and 
generosity towards me when the sky was 
clouded and the hope of life seemed verj' small. 
Clark Prescott Bissett 



LINCOLN 

Stripped to the soul of every vain conceit, 
I stand before the record of his deeds. 

O mighty man, so humble and so sweet, 

O heart, so quick to throb for human needs. 

Charles Eugene Banks. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



The blood of a man is the blood of his 
ancestors for generations, perhaps for seons. 
How far back into the dim past must we 
grope to find the seed blood of such a man as 
Abraham Lincoln? 

Through what numberless selections, 
receiving and denying, was that process car- 
ried on ? How many violations of nature's law 
by Febellious atoms, brought destruction to the 
unfit, and cleared the wav for the harmonizing 
of the fit through these myriads upon mvriads 
of life channels, until at last the emancipator 
was born? These are-the thoughts which grip 
and hold when the character and works of 
America's greatest soul genius is considered. 
There is no answer. Deit}*. Who knows all 
laws and the working of them, is alone cogni- 
zant of such things. Yet a little knowledge of 
the course of the stars in their orbits compels 
the recognition of law in all creation, all utter- 
ance. Chance is pushed aside immediately the 
[ 1 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

realm of reason is entered. Nothing is by- 
chance. If a grain of sand had its conception, 
before the mists of which the earth is made 
had cooled, is a Lincoln to come into being by 
a cast of mortal dice? Was this harmonious 
representative of all the best in physical, 
mental, moral and soul endowment of less 
moment to the Universal Creator than a spar- 
row, which does not fall to the ground without 
His notice? Is the genius of a Wagner, who 
brought together such sublime harmonies, 
accidental? And did the man who struck the 
cords of universal rights, universal justice, and 
universal democracy, have less care from the 
Father of all life, than His simpler creations? 
Abraham Lincoln is the name of a combina- 
tion of Nature's forces in such harmonious 
union, that the more they were beaten upon, 
the more they proved their divine metal, the 
brighter the effulgence they emitted. Pore 
over all the records of his life, which is one of 
the simplest and most open that this earth has 
ever seen, and there is no point of it that shows 
the least flaw when measured by the Rule of 
Truth. 

[2 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

An intellectual giant may be developed by 
culture from an inferior brain and body. A 
great general, like Napoleon, may be in a sense 
the product of his environment. A great 
inventor like Edison may be forced to his 
highest point by application and the study of 
science applied to natural law. A great 
philosopher like Socrates may be developed 
through the channels of observation and the 
warmth of his heart. A great financier like 
Gould or Morgan may be educated to suprem- 
acy in the school of business, big and little. 
But a wise lawgiver, like Solomon or Lincoln, 
is not born of the flesh but of the spirit. Jus- 
tice, the sense of it even, cannot be put into a 
man's brain and heart by any process of edu- 
cation, or environment, or experience. 

The one attribute of Abraham Lincoln that 
ruled his being like a central sun was Justice. 
All other attributes circled around it and were 
governed by it. You may call it Justice or you 
may call it love. It matters not, for there is 
no difiference in the quality or quantity of these 
two words. An earthly being whose motive 
power is justice will do exactly the same things 
[ 3 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

under the same circumstances as one whose 
motive power is love. This statement is capa- 
ble of proof, from comparison of the two or 
three figures in the records of the world who 
have best represented these chief attributes of 
Deity. 

Lincoln the boy was as just as Lincoln the 
man. He required no precedent on which to 
found his reasoning. He was as ready as Solo- 
mon to give his decision on any vital point and 
his verdicts were as simple and uncontroverti- 
ble. Born and reared on the borderland 
between states that were divided on a question 
which had reached no decisive solution, 
through all the ages, outside of religious phi- 
losophy, he never even debated it in his own 
mind. A union of states meant the union of the 
individual, and neither was open to secession. 

An inharmonious intellect was as much at 
war with itself, in his high temple of thought, 
as an inharmonious state, or country, or king- 
dom. He saw in the Union under the Decla- 
ration of Independence, the Union of the indi- 
vidual — the harmonious man, capable of self- 
government, subject to no man's dictation, as 
[4] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

far as the life, and the freedom to live that life, 
in the world of justice could be carried: such 
a thing as human ownership of another human 
being could not be, in the thought of the child 
or the man Lincoln. He acknowledged no 
allegiance to any power on earth. His Creator 
was his sole and only King. The union of the 
States was a symbol to him of his union with 
God. 

Study him as you may, by his own words, 
by the records made of him through his inti- 
mates, and by his acts, and you will find no 
other Lincoln than this. If the times in which 
he lived brought to light this attribute of jus- 
tice in all its pure radiance, that does not argue 
that the times were the cause of it. Not at all. 
The Union had hundreds of men of far greater 
educational virtues, far superior culture, far 
broader experience, and of no less human sym- 
pathies — Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd 
Garrison, John Brown, Stephen A. Douglas, 
his great rival; Salmon P. Chase, Edwin A. 
Stanton, and the great prime minister, Wil- 
liam H. Seward ; but none of these had lighted 
in his soul the lamp of justice. Not one of 
[ 5 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

them could bring himself to love his personal 
enemy: much less the enemies of his theory 
of government. Lincoln proved himself to be 
compounded of Love and Justice, so absolutely 
so, that he never judged any man. He may 
have punished because he himself obeyed the 
law of justice, but he did not cease to love. 

We talk of democracy, but the world has 
known but few democrats — perhaps not more 
than two. To see every human being as an 
equal before the law of justice is impossible 
to any merely educated intelligence. 

The eyes that look upon men, as the rain 
falls, alike on the just and on the unjust, are 
not subject to the light of libraries. They shine 
with the light of heaven. No mortal reason 
can bring a man to this sublime philosophy. 
Such a state of mind is foolishness to culture. 
Even religious enthusiasm falls far short of 
this God-like contemplation of the things of 
this world. But Abraham Lincoln so saw, so 
felt, so understood. Black or white, bond or 
free, friend or enemy, he saw them all in love 
— "Father, forgive them, for they know not 
what they do," speaks out boldly in his every 
[ 6 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

utterance, beams out benignly from his every 
act. 

The books that have been written in an 
endeavor to express their authors' reflection of 
this man Lincoln, now make a large library. 
But not one of them, written as they are out 
of the best heart's love, compares with the man 
Lincoln, or begins to shine with his illimitable 
personality. Records of him are material. He 
himself was a living flame, burning grandly, 
but steadily, making plain the smallest fibre 
of any fact to which its rays were directed. 
Such a man is beyond description. The noblest 
mind among men can do no more than to 
appreciate him to its greatest bent, and then it 
finds itself only in the borderland of his clear 
thought. What matter if his boots were 
unblacked, or his coat ill-fitting. There was 
not a stain upon his heart, nor a wrinkle in his 
soul. His simplest sentence is a thunderbolt: 
his fiercest anathema a blessing. He walks 
the land today, a spirit of colossal proportions 
by which men, measured by their words and 
acts, are the merest pigmies. 
[ 7 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ever lost a batdc 
lus gEmcaSakdp lattcd obIt fow years, and 

war. T irnhi^s woik cadaied from the cradle 
am iaio dcnu^, aad his batdcs were in the 
fcigl h iu doads of hsnaa leana, aad he too 
■ever lost a bottlcL His loot never took a 
backward stqiL Hb jiig^nrt never failed. 
Nciikcr did Ids lopve pale ncM- his josdce repent. 
Look ^onthat hondj iMctned face hang- 
stndfvralL Do too doc fed a 
glow in jomr heart? Do not the 
in jami l»ain fall into sweet 
Does not limn niilj show itself in 
Do not penonal j mb iti ons 
fade? Do not ^■■■"'"'■** die awar? And is 
fhcie not yniMlMi^ bom in yonr whole being 
a conscionsness oi haimonr and sweet secnritr 
for the eventnal salvation of the peoples of the 
eaith? Snch is the innoftal inlnrnrr of 
Abraham Linrffln No other man who crer 
tiod the earth stands as dose to the heart of 
the viorld as Abrdiam I inmin sare He who 
for all III li inil the trarhingp that was 
to befl^ aemf^ified — *«»g moftals; 
[«] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

by this cabin-bom son of American pioneers, 
and whose going out from this life wrought 
not only a union of the States, but, for that 
hour of mourning at least, the Union of all the 
peoples of the earth. 

On February 12th, 1809, a child was bom 
in whose veins flowed the pure blood of pro- 
test against ever\" form of despotism and 
oppression. That child was Abraham Lin- 
coln. The most exhaustive research, bearing 
upon his lineage, fails to reveal among his 
ancestors any one foreign to the Anglo-Saxon 
race. In him met and commingled the sturdy 
Puritan Roundhead of Massachusetts and the 
chivalric cavalier of old Virginia. Back of 
that, the line leads to the two divisions of 
England's best blood, facing each other in the 
historic War of the Roses. Religious coercion 
on the one hand, and property despotism on the 
other, had forced the Puritans out of England 
to the inhospitable shores of Massachusetts; 
the unfortunate and pleasure-loving debtor 
children of the cavaliers to the softer climate 
of the Chesapeake. In this new environment, 
these different strains of Briton's conquerors 
[9] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

were again pressed together for self-preserva- 
tion ; with the Mother Country hounding them 
from the sea, and hordes of savages threat- 
ening them by land, the American Colonist 
wrested freedom from the one, and a princely 
domain from the other. The Roundheads, 
moving westward from Massachusetts into 
Pennsylvania, and thence southward into Vir- 
ginia, and the cavaliers journeying from the 
Chesapeake into Kentucky and Tennessee, 
became one again, after a hundred years of 
separation, in a race of hardy pioneers; in a 
new country, which was the immediate refuge 
of the persecuted and oppressed of all western 
Europe, wherein English, Dutch, Spanish, 
French and Portuguese exiles found foothold 
and clung with the last despairing hope of 
ultimate freedom. Abraham Lincoln's fore- 
fathers, paternal and maternal, seem never to 
have mated outside their tribe. By the process 
of elimination, the great Emancipator stands 
out as the purest type of an American, whether 
he be considered from a standpoint of ancestry 
or achievement. How many generations of 
Protestant dissenters, of Puritan idealism, of 
[ 10 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

final pilgrimage into the savage wilderness, of 
cavalier glory, passionate love of life, and ulti- 
mate poverty and woe, were woven and knitted 
into the strange child-life that Nancy Hanks 
brought into the world, in the floorless cabin, 
on the Kentucky frontier! What memories of 
good fighting on sea and land, of Norsemen 
with flowing hair shining in the sun, bearing 
down upon swarthy Franks who met them in 
the death grapple for territorial supremacy! 
What subconscious dreams of kingly courts, 
of brave jousts for love or fame, of holy Cru- 
sades, of gradual loss of religious and political 
freedom, of sturdy rebellion, of bloody inter- 
necine war, of sacrifice and persecution, with 
the primal principle of self-government, burn- 
ing forever in the heart! 

When the original seed from which Abra- 
ham Lincoln sprung is considered, the splen- 
did manhood and womanhood that culminated 
in his being, is not so much a matter of won- 
der: it seems more like the positive demonstra- 
tion of a scientific fact. 

It is, or seems to be, a provision of nature, 
that her very greatest children should have the 
[ 11 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ven- humblest birth and childhood. The 
Master of all men was born in a stable and 
reared amidst poverty and toil. The master 
of all literature, Shakespeare, was of humble 
birth, and his early years were passed in 
obscuritN* and privation. Lincoln, the master 
of all Republican rulers, was bom to sorrow, 
privation, toil, and the most meager intellec- 
tual advantages. His childhood and youth 
were passed in a region so isolated, and among 
a people so scattered and poverty stricken, that 
the record of his life, as he himself declared, 
can be compressed into a single line of Gray's 
Eleg>-, 

"The short and simple annals of the poor." 
That a man who has stamped his genius, his 
personality', his unexampled mind and char- 
acter, in large letters upon the golden pages of 
the world's most sublime and colossal events, 
and. at the same time, flooded his surroundings 
with a halo of purit\\ gentleness and immeas- 
urable love, will always be a matter of aston- 
ishment and wonder. To penetrate even a 
little way into his great heart, and see even 
dimly with his unclouded vision, the under- 
[ 12 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

lying principle of human life, is to be born 
again. Nothing short of Divine inspiration 
can give the measure of his wisdom and uni- 
versal love. 

If we are to attribute his genius to the evo- 
lution of blood and birth, we must see in one 
comprehensive view, the Greek, the Roman, 
the Gaul, the ancient Hebrew, and the Jew of 
the first century of the Christian era, the Nor- 
man, the Saxon, the Celt, and the swiftly 
sweeping pageantry of western Europe, with 
all these pouring its best heart's blood into the 
little Island of Britain, where it is purified 
in the seething melting pot of struggle for 
human liberty, to flow out again anew into the 
settlement of the American Colonies. Here 
we find it cr\^stallizing in the perfect expres- 
sion of all human rights, human hopes and 
human ideals, in the one greatest world's sen- 
tence: ''We hold these truths to be self-evi- 
dent, that all men are created equal, that they 
are endowed by their Creator with certain 
unalienable rights, that among these are life, 
liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Fur- 
ther than this, the mind of man cannot go; 
[ 13 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

higher it cannot reach; deeper it cannot pene- 
trate; more just or merciful it cannot be. 

Here is reached the loftiest conception of 
life, among a noble and perfected people. 
That such a state of existence has never been 
approached upon this earth, does not weaken 
in the least the force and substance of this 
highest truth. As the human heart conceived 
it and gave it form and utterance, so the 
human heart everywhere and under all cir- 
cumstances, recognizes the glorious possibility 
of its final achievement, and the humblest 
and most ignorant conceive somewhat of the 
blessed state of life in such a society; and it 
was the application of this perfect principle 
of government to all the afifairs of life, that 
made Abraham Lincoln the foremost figure 
in his day and which is lifting him higher and 
higher in the scale of human greatness, as the 
years go by. 

For every child born into the world, there 
is a stir in the universe. It cannot be other- 
wise, if men are souls, and the children of 
God. Human life attains dignity, as we real- 
ize this stupendous fact. Each individual 
[ 14 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

coming and going in the earth-world must 
have a meaning, must be a definite and authen- 
ticated note in the composition of life: other- 
wise, there can be no meaning in the statement 
on which the government of America is 
founded. Unless men are born with equal 
privileges to struggle, and strive, and rise to 
the heights of their nature, there is nothing 
either just or merciful in the scheme of things. 

In the drama of today, characters are cast 
for each part. The story of all human en- 
deavor, once it has passed into history, shows 
each incident, each act, to have been well con- 
sidered, each event to have its correct place in 
the unfoldment of history, whether it be that 
of a man or a nation. Each epoch has its cen- 
tral figure, and over against this mighty genius 
is set a number of contrasting figures, ambi- 
tious either to rise with the mighty one, or to 
overthrow him and triumph above his ashes. 

Such a world-soul was Abraham Lincoln. 
Into the New-Old Confederation of States, he 
came to weld them into a political monism, a 
union indivisable; a government in which 
each and every individual, born American, or 
[ 15 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

achieving that relationship through acquired 
legal citizenship, has equal power in the con- 
duct of the government, with every other indi- 
vidual. The advent of this kindly man upon 
the arena of American politics, when the ques- 
tion arose as to what kind of a government the 
United States had, was providential. Under 
his master hand the Union was firmly estab- 
lished, the whipping post forever abolished, 
and four millions of human beings set free. 

Centuries had been preparin-g for such a 
man. The old Hebrew prophets lived and 
uttered their unequaled wisdom, that it might 
leaven the thought and culture of the ages. 
The lowly Nazarene declared the truth of 
man's divinity, that the light of liberty might 
never go out of the world. Into western 
Europe poured the best blood of all the ancient 
peoples, and finally in the Island of Britain 
came the day when the printed Bible was on 
the table of every family, and the spirit of it 
became the very life blood of the Anglo-Saxon 
race. Then when, because of this very book, 
bitter persecution drove honest men and 
women to brave the hardships and dangers of 
[ 16 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the new world, this same book became the 
chief corner stone in. the government of the 
colonies. 

As is so finely said by the learned Doctor 
Levy: "The advent of men of genius is an 
inexplicable event. They are the unantici- 
pated lightning flashes in a wintry sky. They 
illuminate the horizon like an unexpected 
Aurora Borealis. They break chains. They 
loosen fetters. They rend shackles. They 
depose policy and enthrone principle. They 
pierce the demons of injustice with the glit- 
tering sword of right. They are as dew in the 
heat of conflict, and water to the soul that 
thirsts. In a word, they are the incarnation of 
the Spirit of God. Like the breaking of the 
dawn they come, the bringers of good tidings. 
They are the heroes of a new era. * * * 
They sow spiritual seed. They lead many 
unto righteousness. The cause of God pros- 
pers in their hands. * * * Upon their 
shoulders is placed the task of bearing the bur- 
dens of human suffering. Upon their tragic 
faces are burned the rugged lines of care. 
Gaunt and unlovely in appearance, awkward 
[ 17 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

and often unpolished in speech, unwilling to 
bend the knee to the Baal of social convention, 
they are hated and despised of their age. They 
are the men who hear the voice of God speak- 
ing from the flaming heights, aye, from the 
Sinai of the human heart. They are the men 
who see God in the wilderness; they speak to 
Him face to face. They follow Him. They 
cannot turn back. A long-ranged view of 
humanity is granted them. They cannot be 
untrue to the heavenly vision. Right and jus- 
tice, truth and goodness are the accents they 
hear with the spiritual organ of an inspired 
imagination. They cannot if they would, be 
faithless to the eternal music of the spheres. 
Grim and grave they are, set of jaw and firm 
of purpose. They can die, but they cannot and 
will not lie. When in the silent watches of 
the night others sleep, they hold communion 
with the spirit of the universe. When others 
are occupied building fortunes up to the heav- 
ens, only to hide heaven from the view, they 
are exploring the elemental truths of human 
existence and pledging their all in defense of 
them. 

[ 18 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

"When these men of moral genius have seen 
from afar the Land of Promise; when God has 
vouchsafed to them a vision of the City Beau- 
tiful; when there flashes upon their inner con- 
sciousness a picture of aNew Jerusalem; when 
they dream of the City whose name is right- 
eousness, whose walls are holiness, whose ruler 
is equity, and whose defense is love; they can- 
not eat, they cannot sleep, they cannot drink, 
until they have shared with others that which 
God has vouchsafed to them. Like lofty 
mountain peaks, they stand alone. They 
desire solitude for a time. They speak with 
God and bring unbreakable tables of right and 
truth to their fellow men. These men are the 
salt of the earth. They are the saviours of 
mankind. Among every race such men are to 
be found. Wherever God's sun illuminates 
the earth, there at some time or another, such 
men have arisen to witness to the light, to be 
spokesmen for the causes dear to the Heart 
of God." 

So the genealogy of the great Emancipator 
should begin with Socrates and touch upon 
every mountain peak of human love and uni- 
[ 19 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Tcml bnMhcikood thnMii^i all tbc igcs. It is 
■Qt mu MLppii^ the boads of coascicndous- 
■cs^ lo fed tlttt A htjiu m Lnoolii was the 
Mood biothci of diose lew onhrcisad seers and 
wlio stand m die white light of 
■mI oofilieiiiig lore opoo the Gol- 
goAas of glo ffioo s maityidooL 

An iMBBai i c uM d s arc hot broken fng- 
■cats of aBOBls progress ooward from slime 
fnan ca[vc aid cabin, to the present 
ih oofih t is flashed aroond the 
before the lips that utter it rest 
Those who have been most 
to keep complete from root to 
the family tree, must generally 
be cati^fed with the efiFon itself. The world 
kas caaac to search such records for the 
TV of a pTDDOODCcd character. Nature 
'rlight in playing tricks with pride 
-^ Perhaps the All-Father would 
dren. in this way, their utter 
Him, and grind it into 
t& that man has but one 



FiL 



•^ selected and distin- 
: were a rugged and 
[20] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

honest race, as the book of his genealogy 
proves; this plain, simple man of the people 
might have traced his ancestn* back to the best 
blood of England. The table of his genealogy- 
shows this surprising fact, that the Lincoln 
stock, the branch at least which produced 
Abraham Lincoln, by some indefinable law. 
which we must ascribe to Divine Providence 
(for it is too clear and direct to be the result 
of chance), kept itself pure to its ancestral 
stock. Even the same family names recur 
again and again, generation after generation. 
Biblical names for the most part with alwavs 
an Abraham, as though, like the Children of 
Israel, thev were awaiting the birth of the 
divinely commissioned to lift humanitv one 
step higher in the understanding of itself, and 
make one ray clearer, what are the just and 
happv relations of men, the one with another. 

"The color of tiie groond was in him. The rrd earth : 
The rang md odor of ike prand tUogs — 
The rectitadc and la yimnr of Ar reds; 
The ^^^itf«. of Ac -wrind that shakes the com : 
Tbc cew ir age of tbe bard that dares the sea : 
The justice of dbe raia tkat kves all leaves : 
The phy of snow tkat Indes all scars : 
[21 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

The loving kindness of the wayside well ; 
The tolerance and equity of light 
That gives as freely to the shrinking weed 
As to the great oak flaring to the wind — 
To the grave's low hill as the Matterhorn 
That shoulders out the sky." 

As an epoch of human history becomes 
remote, there is visible, to the eyes of those 
who see, the figure of some man who is recog- 
nized as its great embodiment. The golden 
age of Greece is summed up in Pericles. 
Julius Cssar was the supreme expression of an 
age of power and law. The great Cromwell 
interpreted the English protest against every 
form of despotism. At this distance from the 
sixties, and that great, sad struggle, it is appar- 
ent that the colossal form rising above all oth- 
ers, is the weird figure of Abraham Lincoln. 

The story of that boy as he grew to man- 
hood is now a household legend, cherished in 
every American home: a chore boy at seven- 
teen, six feet four in his stockings — when he 
had any; a rail splitter; a farm hand; a clerk 
in the country store of Denton-Ofifut & Com- 
pany, at New Salem; so honest that when one 
day he took six cents over much from a cus- 
[ 22 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN" 

tomer, he could not go to bed until that even- 
ing, after his day's work, he walked three 
miles into the country to pay back the money; 
a champion wrestler; a story teller, enchanting 
the village with his droll tales; a captain in 
the Black Hawk War; a member of the 
unlucky firm of Berry & Lincoln, the latter of 
whom sprawled on the store counter, or on the 
grass in the orchard, reading Blackstone, while 
his dissolute partner drank whiskey; a bank- 
rupt, whose store had winked out and left him, 
so he said, with the national debt of eleven 
hundred dollars on his hands; a postmaster, 
carrying the mail around in his hat; a deputy 
surveyor, whose instruments were sold for 
debt; an almost desperate lover, grieving for 
Ann Rutledge; a candidate for the legislature, 
and not a very promising one either, in a 
mixed green coat, flax and tow linen panta- 
loons, a straw hat and pot metal boots, a 
wardrobe hardly up even to the Sangamon 
County standard. Fortunately the good peo- 
ple of his country knew that clothes do not 
make men, and they soon discovered that in 
intelligent capacity and in loftiness of purpose 
[ 23 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

he exceeded all the candidates. Of his experi- 
ence as a legislator; of his triumphs during his 
twenty-five years' practice at the Illinois bar; 
of his famous speech at the Springfield con- 
vention, when, as he put it, willing to go down, 
linked to the truth in the advocacy of what 
was just and right, he said: "A house divided 
against itself cannot stand. I believe this gov- 
ernment cannot endure permanently half slave 
and half free. I do not expect the Union to 
be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall. 
But I do expect it will cease to be divided"; 
and of his nomination and election to the 
Presidency, I need not here speak in detail. 
It is enough to say that in all these, we find 
the same man, shrewd, sturdy, unconventional, 
svmpathetic, always eager to play fair, with a 
keen sense of humor, but with the deep under- 
tone of melancholy, which does not allow us 
to forget the mother buried in the forest clear- 
ing. As Mr. Pillsbur\' says: "How strange 
and startling are the dramatic shifts of scene 
and circumstance that attend the unfolding of 
this unique character. The forlorn backwoods 
boy turns out to be the appointed head of a 
[ 24 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

great nation, in a crisis affecting the fate of the 
world. The obscure country lawyer reveals 
in a phrase what a people is waiting to hear, 
and becomes in a day the prophet of a cause. 
The uncouth westerner from the prairies, 
unpracticed in arms, or in statescraft, outmas- 
ters the statesmen, outwits the diplomatists, 
gives the generals their plan of campaign. 
The unlettered man of the people speaks lofty 
eloquence soon to become classic. The raw 
politician, who never held public power for a 
day, takes the helm of state, when the ship is 
already on the rocks, when all the pilots and 
captains stand helpless and appalled, to bring 
her in safety and triumph through the storm. 
The awkward clown, reviled and lampooned 
over two continents, in four years is canonized 
by mankind. Without training, without exter- 
nal attractions, without worldly advantage, 
this child of poor frontier folk makes his way 
out of the wilderness to fix for all time the eyes 
of the world upon him, as a leader of the peo- 
ple, the liberator of the slave, the deliverer of 
his country, and in another turn of the kalei- 
doscope, to be numbered with the glorious 
[ 25 ] 



y 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

company of the martyrs and with Thy saints 
in glory everlasting." 

When the Republican convention met in 
Chicago in 1860, the name of Abraham Lin- 
coln was not much known beyond the narrow 
confines of his own state. He had gained cer- 
tain prominence in his debates with Douglas, 
but he had been rejected by the state in his 
fight for the senatorship. Here again was a 
case where the stone which the builders 
rejected was destined in the Providence of 
God to become the head of the corner — and 
to a great majority of the men composing the 
Republican party, he was not thought to be a 
serious presidential possibility. The name 
which was most prominently before the Re- 
publicans was that of William H. Seward of 
New York. He was the recognized leader of 
the Republican party, and, speaking broadly, 
the country expected him to receive the nom- 
ination. That Seward expected to be nom- 
inated is beyond question. He had resigned 
from the United States Senate, and had gath- 
ered his friends around him, in his home at 
Auburn, and was awaiting the message which 
[ 26 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

should announce to him that he was the stand- 
ard-bearer of the then new Republican party. 
The result of that convention we all know. 
The message announcing Seward's nomination 
did not come, but, instead, a message came 
bearing the startling intelligence that Abra- 
ham Lincoln, the country lawyer of Illinois, 
had been chosen. But even after Lincoln was 
nominated, a large percentage of the Repub- 
licans felt that the choice of the convention 
was an unwise one, and that, after all, Seward 
w^as the only man worthy of the full confidence 
of the party. They reasoned: "Seward is a 
tried and trusted statesman, his long and useful 
experience as Governor of New York, and as 
Senator from that State, have given ample 
executive and legislative experience," and, as 
they themselves said: "The nomination of 
Lincoln was the triumph of unobjectionable 
mediocrity over greatness, which had of neces- 
sity, during a long series of public services, 
raised up many enemies to itself." 

"The result of the Chicago convention," 
wrote the committee to Seward, "has been 
more than a surprise to the Republicans of 
[ 27 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

New York. That you who have been the 
earliest defender of Republican principles — 
the acknowledged head and leader of the 
party, who have given directions to its move- 
ments and form and substance to its acts — that 
you should have been put aside upon the nar- 
row ground of expediency, we can hardly 
realize or believe. Whatever the decision of 
this, or a hundred other conventions, we rec- 
ognize in vou the real leader of the Republi- 
can party; and the citizens of every State and 
of all creeds and parties, and the history of 
our country will confirm this judgment." 

It is but just, however, to say that despite 
this feeling, Seward did not even for a moment 
forget his allegiance to the great principles of 
his party, and threw himself heart and soul 
into the campaign and worked with a vigor 
and eloquence which did much to accomplish 
the glorious results, and yet withal, the opinion 
of the great prime minister regarding Lincoln 
had not changed. He still considered him a 
weak and untried man, and his personal letters 
of this period revealed the startling fact that 
he (Seward) regarded himself as the only per- 
[ 28 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

son capable of preserving the Union, and his 
acceptance of the portfolio of State was in 
view of the necessity of some strong and able 
hand to guide the destinies of the incoming 
administration. Lincoln was deeply sensible 
of this criticism, and he felt the estimate in 
which he was held by the great men of his own 
party. There is a note of sadness in his tone as 
he leaves Springfield for Washington on the 
11th day of February, 1861, which, in part at 
least, is to be accounted for by his knowledge 
of the mental attitude of his associates in the 
tremendous undertaking which was before 
him: 

"My friends: No one, not in my situation, 
can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this 
parting. To this place and to the kindness of 
these people, I owe everything. Here I have 
lived a quarter of a century, and have passed 
from a young man to an old man. Here my 
children have been born, and one is buried. I 
now leave, not knowing when, or whether 
ever, I may return, with a task before me 
greater than that which rested upon Washing- 
ton. Without the assistance of that Divine 
[ 29 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Being Who ever attended him, I cannot suc- 
ceed. With that assistance, I cannot fail. 
Trusting in Him Who can go with me, and 
remain with you, and be everywhere for good, 
let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. 
To His care commending you, as I hope in 
your prayers you will commend me, I bid you 
an affectionate farewell." 

Washington had at least the confidence and 
respect of his associates in his great struggle, 
but this brave, lonely soul left his home in the 
simple village to assume responsibilities so tre- 
mendous and overwhelming, and yet without 
the full measure of the confidence and respect 
of those who were jointly interested with him 
in the notable endeavors — and how won- 
drously did he, step by step, overcome the 
prejudices of his fellows, until they were at 
least ready, all, to bow the knee, and proclaim 
him master. Passing over the attempt of Sew- 
ard to revise the inaugural address by leaving 
out the clause : "to hold, occupy and possess the 
property and places belonging to the govern- 
ment," and his bitter and forceful attempts to 
prevent "bread being sent to Anderson," which 
[ 30 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

was the President's expression for sending 
relief to Fort Sumpter — we come to one of the 
most remarkable events in our histor}^, namely, 
a member of the official family of the Presi- 
dent, demanding in a letter that the President 
surrender the management of the government 
to him. This, Mr. Seward did in a memoran- 
dum, entitled, "Some Thoughts for the Presi- 
dent's Consideration." This letter is after all 
one of the most extraordinary pieces of effront- 
ery ever uttered. This remarkable document 
asserts that the administration, after a month, 
is without a policy, foreign or domestic. In 
closing, after advising that explanations were 
to be demanded of England, Spain, France 
and Russia, and if some satisfactory answers 
were not received, then war should be de- 
clared, he says: 

"Whatever policy we adopt, there must be 
energetic prosecution of it. For this purpose, 
it must be somebody's business to pursue and 
direct it, incessantly. Either the President 
must do it himself, and be all the while active 
in it, or devolve it upon some member of his 
cabinet. Once adopted, all debates on it must 
[ 31 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

end, and all agree and abide. It is not in my 
especial province; but I neither seek to evade 
or assume responsibility." 

To this, the President replied that the 
domestic policy of the administration was to 
be found in the inaugural address, and that 
the foreign policy was contained in the circu- 
lars and instructions already issued to minis- 
ters and the like, all in perfect harmony, with- 
out even a suggestion that we had no foreign 
policy. Upon the closing proposal, that the 
responsibility must rest somewhere, and abso- 
lute authority be given some one, Mr. Lincoln 
said: 

"I remark that if this must be done, I must 
do it. When a general line of policy is 
adopted, I apprehend there is no danger of its 
being changed without good reason, or con- 
tinue to be a subject of unnecessary debate; 
still upon points arising in its progress, I wish 
and suppose I am entitled to have the advice 
of all the cabinet." 

Am I not right in saying that if Mr. Sew- 
ard's "Thoughts for the President's Consid- 
eration," is a remarkable document, that Lin- 
[ 32 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

coin's reply is thrice remarkable? Has the 
world another parallel of such magnanimity? 
As Alonzo Rothschild says : ^'Having quietly 
settled the question of supremacy, Mr. Lincoln 
put the ^Thoughts' away among his personal 
papers, where they remained until his private 
secretaries, years after both statesmen had 
passed from the scene, published them to an 
astonished world. Excepting Mr. Nicolay, 
nobody else apparently knew of their exist- 
ence, for the one to whom they were addressed 
never, it is believed, spoke of them, not even to 
the Secretary of State himself. If that gentle- 
man, when he received his answer, had any 
lingering doubts as to the President's superi- 
ority over him, they must have been dismissed, 
when he realized how entirely Mr. Lincoln 
disdained to take advantage of a weapon, 
which in the grasp of most politicians would, 
under the circumstances, have been used to 
destroy the maker. If ever a public man held 
a formidable rival in the hollow of his hand, 
here was an instance of it. Yet Gulliver set- 
ting down unharmed the Liliputian who had 
tormented him, behaved not more gently than 
[ 33 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

did the President toward his presumptuous 
minister." 

Thus ended Mr. Seward's dream of domin- 
ation. Thus began the revision of his opinions. 
Thus began the common understanding, which 
grew day by day into a love, and finally a 
veneration and reverence until with old 
Adam, Seward was wont to cry out: 

"Master, go on, and I will follow thee 
To the last gasp with faith and loyalty." 

With a grace peculiarly his own, Seward 
adapted himself to the new conditions, his 
every action thereafter seems to say: 

"Pardon, I beseech you 
Henceforward I am ever ruled by you." 

How quickly sometimes conditions change. 
Not many months after the incidents referred 
to, a change had come over the general senti- 
ments of the country, and many dissatisfied 
Republicans in New England sought to dis- 
credit Mr. Seward in the eyes of the Presi- 
dent. In fact, in September, 1862, a commit- 
tee called on Mr. Lincoln, representing not 
only the dissatisfied Republicans of New 
York, but five New England Governors also. 
[ 34 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

They practically demanded such a change of 
policy as could but result in the dismissal of 
Mr. Seward from the cabinet. The President, 
perceiving that their criticism was based upon 
personal feeling, dismissed them with this 
short and forceful sentence : "You gentlemen, 
to hang Mr. Seward, would destroy the gov- 
ernment." Later in the same year at a caucus 
of Republican Senators, it was voted to de- 
mand that Seward be dismissed, but even with 
such powerful enemies, Lincoln's fidelity and 
love for his great Prime Minister did not fal- 
ter; he defended him in season and out of 
season, and retained him as his friend and 
colleague unto the end. 

Well might Emerson say: ''His heart was 
as great as the world, but there was no room 
in it to hold the memory of a wrong." Well 
indeed might Longfellow, writing to his 
friend, say: "To understand the heart of the 
President, is to know the beauty of the Heart 
of the Son of Man." 

Rising in the House of Commons, when the 
news of the death of Lincoln reached England, 
Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, said: 
[ 35 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

"Whatever the various or varying opinions, in 
this House, and in the country generally, on 
the policy of the late President of the United 
States, all must agree that in one of the severest 
trials that ever tested the moral qualities of 
man, he fulfilled his duty with simplicity and 
strength." 

He mastered the great men about him, not 
because he was President. His mastery was of 
another kind; great enough to confess his own 
wrong, great enough to follow the advice of 
his associates; great enough also, in the last 
analysis, to remain firm when he was con- 
victed of the righteousness and justice of his 
opinion, against any or all of his advisers and 
friends; great enough to overlook personal 
insults and repeated disrespect, if the cause of 
union and liberty were to be aided thereby. His 
relation not only with Secretary Seward, but 
also with Secretaries Chase and Stanton, 
exhibits enough of the magnanimous nature of 
this mountain-hearted man to give us a broad 
understanding of the stupendous fact, that the 
law of love was the dominating and all pow- 
erful trait in the character of Abraham Lin- 
[ 36 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

coin. Other men who have won distinction in 
the annals of our history, may lay claim to 
greatness by reason of their intellectual attain- 
ments; by reason of indomitable force of their 
characters; but Lincoln stands alone as the one 
man who, in the midst of strife and disaster, 
in the midst of treachery and treason, in the 
midst of backbiting and calumny, stood and 
wielded his influence, not by the force of his 
position, but by the compelling power of love, 
and I trust I may not be accused of any sacri- 
legious or irreverent remark, when I tell you 
that his character more nearly resembles the 
character of Him Who was the Saviour of 
mankind, than the character of any other man 
noted in the history of our country. It has 
been repeatedly said that Lincoln was only an 
echo; that the great men about him ruled and 
dominated him; that he was the creature of 
his cabinet. The controversy between Mont- 
gomery Blair and General Halleck is an 
instance of his matchless magnanimity. 

Mr. Blair, as Postmaster General, had made 
some disparaging remarks concerning the 
army, and General Halleck resented these 
[ 37 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

remarks. His case was taken up by Secre- 
taries Stanton and Chase, and they endeavored 
to secure Mr. Blair's removal from the cab- 
inet. When the matter was brought to the at- 
tention of the President, and he was appealed 
to, to dismiss Mr. Blair from the cabinet, he 
prepared the following address, which he 
delivered to his ministers: 

"I must myself be the judge how long to 
retain and when to remove any one of you 
from his position. It would greatly pain me 
to discover any of you endeavoring to procure 
another's removal, or in any way to prejudice 
him before the public. Such endeavor would 
be a wrong to me, and much worse, a wrong to 
the country. My wish is that on this subject 
no remark be made, or questions asked by any 
of you here or elsewhere, now or hereafter." 

This address has somewhat the tone of a 
schoolmaster lecturing a class of unruly boys, 
and, to any candid mind, must put to rest for- 
ever the insinuation that he was anything but 
the master giving his explicit and imperative 
directions to his subordinates. 
[ 38 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

This little address should be read by all who 
are misled into the belief that Lincoln was not 
an authority in the administration that bears 
his name. And, moreover, there is, even in 
this address, forceful and powerful as it is, the 
gentle element of love which pervades every- 
thing that came from his majestic pen. 

Lincoln did not approve of the disparaging 
remarks which were made by Mr. Blair, but 
he felt that they were not sufficient in them- 
selves to make it necessary for him to inflict 
upon Mr. Blair the humiliation of being asked 
to leave the cabinet, and he was unwilling to 
injure the feelings of this very good and patri- 
otic man, unless the question at issue was a 
vital one. 

This same characteristic is most wonder- 
fully shown in the letter which he writes to 
General Hooker. In giving General Hooker 
the command of the Army of the Potomac, 
Lincoln had many misgivings, and he was par- 
ticularly anxious that Hooker should under- 
stand that he had been guilty of gross unkind- 
ness to his superior officers, but despite the 
fact, the administration was willing to give to 
[ 39 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

him all the support that was possible to give a 
commanding officer. He writes : 

"General, I have placed you at the head of 
the Army of the Potomac. Of course, I have 
done this upon what appears to me to be suf- 
ficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you 
to know that there are some things in regard 
to which I am not quite satisfied with you. 

"I believe you are a brave and skillful sol- 
dier, which, of course, I like. I also believe 
you do not mix in politics with your profes- 
sion, in which you are right. You have confi- 
dence in yourself, which is a valuable, if not 
an indispensable quality. You are ambitious, 
which, within reasonable bounds, does good 
rather than harm; but I think during General 
Burnside's command of the army you have 
taken counsel of your ambition and thwarted 
him as much as you could, in which you did a 
great wrong to the country, and to a most 
meritorious and honorable brother officer. 

"I have heard in such a way as to believe it, 

of you recently saying that both the army and 

the government needed a dictator. Of course, 

it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have 

[ 40 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

given you the command. Only those generals 
who gain successes can set up dictators. What 
I now ask of you is military success, and I will 
risk the dictatorship. 

"The government will support you to the 
utmost of its ability, which is neither more or 
less than it has done and will do for all com- 
manders. I much fear that the spirit that you 
have aided to infuse into the army of criticis- 
ing their commanders, and withholding the 
facts from them, will now turn upon you. I 
shall assist you as far as I can to put it down. 
Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive 
again, could get any good out of an army while 
such a spirit prevails in it. 

"And now, Hooker, beware of rashness! 
Beware of rashness! But with energy and 
sleepless vigilance, go forward and give us 



victories." 



Can anyone read this letter without an over- 
whelming sense of the greatness of this man, 
Abraham Lincoln? Can anyone read this let- 
ter without having a glimpse at least of the 
great love which ruled and governed the life 
of Abraham Lincoln, and caused him to reach 
[41 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

out his strong hand to this impetuous, hasty, 
and wilful, fighting Joe Hooker, and say, 
"Hooker, my son, beware of the pitfalls that 
you yourself have dug, and in God's name go 
forward and give us victories, depending all 
the while upon my faithful assistance, even 
though your own folly may have caused the 
trouble"? 

At this distance, it is difficult for us to 
understand that, prior to Lincoln's second 
election, there were grave doubts expressed 
by many of the country's most prominent men 
as to whether or not Lincoln could be renomi- 
nated and re-elected. During the great popu- 
lar depression which prevailed just before the 
Democratic party made its presidential nomi- 
nation in 1864, and when the campaign of the 
Republicans lagged with indescribable lan- 
guor, the military situation was dark and 
cloudy. 

Lincoln began to share in the prevailing 
impression, that he would not be re-elected. 
Then his enemies circulated the absurd rumor 
that the President and his cabinet, being sure 
of defeat at the polls, would willingly help on 
[ 42 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the ruin that they were not able to avert. 

With these things in view, Mr. Lincoln, 
on the 23 rd of August, wrote the following 
memorandum: 

"This morning, and for some days past, it 
seems exceedingly probable that this ad- 
ministration will not be re-elected. Then it 
will be my duty to so co-operate with the 
President-elect as to save the Union between 
the election and the inauguration, as he will 
have to secure his election on such grounds 
that he can not possibly save it afterwards." 

What can the carping critic say now of the 
politician Lincoln? Politician he truly was; 
but the primary difference betv^een a politi- 
cian and a statesman is the essential motive 
which moves them to action, and in the midst 
of a dark hour, when it seemed that his coun- 
try was determined not to appreciate the effort 
which he was making to save and preserve the 
integrity of the Union, he puts aside his own 
ambition, an ambition worthy of the best 
American, and pledges to himself and Al- 
mighty God, that whatever he does must be 
done to the end of saving and preserving the 
[ 43 ] 



ABIL^HAM LINCX>LN 

ibid dvnng liis enture life, this spirit 
raied a^d gwutd ha cvay acttoa. 

Amdcrrm is bB nvaiiplis, this qmit never 
liof QBC iBancMt ocscricn hin. Jkncr he hjtd 
beoi trivBsifihsMdNp' ic-dodBd to die Prcsi- 
dcacy, hb cacmics diwiiinid — the most 
popivcrfal man is Ac Uutcd Stales — the whole 
ii<ofld liagii^ his inaisc; he is called iqion oa 
to MWi I a serenade. On one 
svfpsin icqnDse: 
^ am thankfnl to God for this appioval of 
the people, hnt iHiilc deefihr giaiefnl ffM- this 
of their confidence in me, if I know my 
heait, my gratitndr is free from any taint 
of |n iwinal uimnjrli I do not impugn the 
of anyone opposed n> me. It is no 
-iiqih over juijum, bat I 
ffwcA-L' ^inr for this evidence 

of Ac pt : : rind by free gov- 

Agyi- : .^:^: __ ^-.^ .^rcr to another 



And 

may not all have a 
: - aoooHr::- rf :-: 




ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

to save our common country? For my own 
part, I have striven, and shall strive to avoid 
placing any obstacle in the way. So long as 
I have been here, I have not willingly planted 
a thorn in any man's bosom. While I am duly 
sensible to the high compliment of a re-elec- 
tion, and duly grateful, as I trust to Almighty 
God, for having directed my countrymen to 
a right conclusion, as I think, for their good, 
it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any 
other man may be disappointed by the result 

''May I ask those who have not differed 
with me, to join me in the same spirit toward 
those who have : and now let me close by ask- 
ing three hearty cheers for our brave soldiers 
and seamen, and for their valiant and success- 
ful commanders.'' 

If ever there was a time in the history of the 
life of Abraham Lincoln, when he might have 
been expected to hold in his magnanimous 
heart some resentment of feeling, some sense 
of personal triumph over his enemies, it was 
at this time : and yet, the whole burden of his 
speech, the whole burden of his words, the 
whole burden of his hopes, his aspirations, 
[45 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

was to the end that under God he might be 
the humble instrumentality in preserving the 
Union of these states. 

The world's history has no parallel — a vic- 
torious champion reaching out his hands to 
the enemies who had slandered and reviled 
him, and saying to them, "Let us forget all 
personal hate and rancor, all personal bitter- 
ness and evil speaking. Nay, let us forget our- 
selves, and lose ourselves in the great endeavor 
to preserve our common country." 

What other President can you name whose 
magnanimous spirit would have prompted 
him to write to his commanding general in 
the field, as Lincoln wrote to Grant: 

"My Dear General: I do not remember 
that you and I have met personally. I write 
this now as a grateful acknowledgment of an 
almost inestimable service you have done the 
country. I write to say a word further. When 
you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I 
thought you should do what you finally did, 
march the troops across the neck, run the bat- 
teries with the transports and go below. 
* * * When you dropped below and took 
[46] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Port Gibson, Grand Gulf and vicinity, I 
thought you should go down the river and 
join General Banks, and when you turned 
northwest, east of the Big Black, I thought it 
was a mistake. I now wish to make the per- 
sonal acknowledgment that you were right, 
and I was wrong. Yours very truly, A. 
Lincoln." 

I presume it is a fair and reasonable state- 
ment, that the world's history has no parallel 
for simplicity of action; the commander-in- 
chief of an army, willingly writing to his 
subordinates in the field, saying ''This is to 
acknowledge that you were right, and I was 
wrong," typifying again, as it does, that the 
ever-favored object of the heart of Abraham 
Lincoln was the country, the nation, the union, 
the preservation of these, placed before his 
own personal feelings and considerations. 

If I should attempt this morning to quote 
the almost innumerable letters of condolence 
and sympathy which this man found time to 
write to the bereaved and stricken families of 
the country, the evening sun would set before 
I had been fairly started. But I want you to 
[ 47 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

bear with me in one instance at least, in order 
that I may illustrate again this spirit of gentle 
kindliness which pervaded his every action: 

"Mrs. Bixby, Boston, Mass. Dear Madam : 
I have been shown in the files of the War De- 
partment a statement of the Adjutant General 
of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of 
five sons who have died gloriously on the field 
of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must 
be any words of mine which should attempt to 
beguile you from a grief of a loss so over- 
whelming, but I cannot refrain from tender- 
ing to you the consolation that may be found 
in the thanks of the Republic they died to 
save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may 
assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and 
leave you only the cherished memory of the 
loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must 
be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon 
the altar of your country. 

"Yours very sincerely and respectfully, 
Abraham Lincoln." 

Ah, what might have been accomplished by 
the man whose heart could dictate so match- 
less a letter of human sympathy as this, 
[ 48 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

had he been spared us in the days of 
reconstruction! 

Sublime was the personality of the man 
whose every action was one of gentleness, and 
whose very heart beat responsive to the sighs 
and to the sorrows of all mankind. This spirit 
was even comprehended by the great leaders 
of the Southern Confederacy, for it was Jef- 
ferson Davis who said: 

"Next to the destruction of the Confederacy, 
the death of Abraham Lincoln was the darkest 
day the South has ever known, and as I grow 
older, I am not sure but that the death of 
Lincoln was a greater calamity even than the 
surrender of Lee's army." 

As I said before, I now repeat — What might 
have been accomplished had he been spared 
to us to mould and fashion the sentiment 
which was to rule and govern the nation in the 
reconstruction period? The dark and terrible 
days through which this nation passed during 
the reconstruction period, I believe would 
have been very different had Lincoln been 
spared to us. 

The great, magnanimous heart of that 
[ 49 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

matchless leader of men was big enough and 
commanding enough in its strength and power 
to have moulded the disintegrated and scat- 
tered elements of the Southern Confederacy 
into a compact and perfect whole, and the 
story of the prodigal son might again have 
been repeated, and the father might have cried 
out to his children: "Come, you have deserted 
my parental roof; you have rebelled against 
my paternal authority; you have risen up in 
insurrection and rebellion; you have spent 
your substance in riotous living; you have 
caused the blood of your brothers, my chil- 
dren, to flow like water; you have cost us bil- 
lions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of 
precious lives; but with it all, I cannot forget 
that you are my children; and while you are 
even yet a great way off from the spirit of sub- 
missive obedience, nevertheless I will gather 
up my remaining strength and I will go out 
in the highways and meet you, and say, 'Come 
again unto your father's house, to a table that 
is spread for you, and there shall be great re- 
joicing, not because of the triumph of our 
arms, not because we have succeeded by force 
[ 50 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

and power in crushing out this rebellion, but 
because I recognize in you my offspring and 
my child.' " 

I cannot better express myself than in the 
immortal words of Dr. Storrs, when he says: 

"When he took the reins of Government, 
the finances of the country seemed hopelessly 
deranged, and after many years of peace, it 
was difficult to raise money at unprecedented 
interest, for its daily use; and when he died, 
after such expenditures as no man dreamed 
of, through four long years of devastating 
war, the credit of the Republic was so firmly 
established that foreign markets were clamor- 
ous for its bonds. 

"When he came to Washington, the Navy, 
at the command of the Government, was scat- 
tered almost beyond recall, to the ends of the 
earth, and was even ludricrously insufficient 
for instant needs. He left it framed in iron^ 
instead of oak, with wholly new principles 
expressed in its structures, and large enough 
to bind the continent in blockade; while it 
made the national flag familiar on every sea 
with commerce courses. 
[ 51 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

"He found an army remotely dispersed, 
almost hopelessly disorganized by the treach- 
ery of its officers, with hardly enough of it left 
to furnish a bodyguard for his march to the 
national capitol. He left half a million men 
in arms, after the losses of fifty campaigns, 
with valor, discipline, arms and generalship 
unsurpassed in the history of the world. 

"He found our diplomacy a byword and a 
hissing in most of the foreign courts. He 
made it intelligent, influential, respected, 
wherever a civilized language is spoken. 

"In his moral and political achievements at 
home he was still more successful. He found 
the arts of industry prostrated, nay, almost 
paralyzed, by the arrest of commerce, the 
repudiation of debts, the universal distrust. 
He left them so trained, quickened and devel- 
oped, that henceforth they are secure amid the 
world's competition. 

"He came to Washington through a people, 
morally rent and disorganized, of whom it was 
known that a part at least were in full accord 
with disloyal plans. He laid heavy taxes; he 
drafted them into armies; he made no effort 
[ 52 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

to excite their admiration; he seemed to throw 
down even the ancient monument of their 
personal liberty. 

"He went back to his grave through the 
very same people, so knit into one, by their 
love for each other, and their reverence for 
him, that the cracking of the continent could 
hardly part them. 

"At his entrance on his office, he found the 
leaders of the largest, fiercest and most con- 
fident rebellion known in history, apparently 
in all things superior to himself in capacity, 
in culture, in political experience, in control 
over men, in general weight with the country 
itself. 

"And, when he was assassinated, he left 
them so utterly overthrown and discomfited 
that they fled over sea; a power it had taken 
thirty years to mature — a power that put 
everything in the contest, money, men, har- 
bors, homes, churches, cities, states them- 
selves, and that fought with a fury never sur- 
passed in the world's history, he not only 
crushed but extinguished in four years. 

"He found a race immeshed in bondage 
[ 53 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

which had lasted already two hundred years, 
and had been compacted and confirmed by 
invention and commerce, by arts, legislation, 
by social usage, and even by religion; he pre- 
tended no special fondness for the race; he 
refused to make war on its behalf; but he took 
it up cheerfully in the sweep of his plans, and 
left it a race of free workers and soldiers. 

"He came to the capitol of an empire, 
severed by what seemed to the world, eternal 
lines, with sectional interest and irremovable 
hatreds, forbidding reconstruction; he left it 
the capitol of an empire, so restored that the 
thought of its division was henceforth an ab- 
surdity; with its untiy more complete than 
that of Great Britain; with its ancient flag 
and unchanging rule supreme again from sea 
to sea, and from Gulf to Great Lakes. 

"Nay, he found a nation who had lost in a 
measure its primitive faith in the grand ideas 
of its own constitution; and he left that nation 
so instructed and renewed, so aware of its 
supremacy of principles over force, so con- 
nected to the justice and the liberty which its 
founders had valued, that the era of his power 
[ 54 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

was the era of its new birth; that our history 
will be nobler and more luminous forever for 
his inspiration. 

"Public achievement is not his only memor- 
ial. His influence has come 'like the clear 
shining after rain,' on the personal character 
of the people he ruled. He educated a nation 
into a gentleness more strange than its skill, 
and more glorious than its valor. 

"Through his personal spirit he restrained 
and exalted the temper of a continent — and 
our letters are nobler, our art more spiritual, 
our philanthropy more generous, our very 
churches more honest and free, because of 
what we learned of him. The public estimate 
of honesty is higher, the sense of the power 
and grandeur of character is more intimate in 
men's minds, — we know what style of man- 
hood America needs, and in her progress, tends 
to produce. He has given us a fresh and 
deeper sense of that eternal Providence, which 
was his daily bulwark. 

"Not to our country alone has his work 
been confined — across the sea extends his 
mighty influence. It verberates this hour 
[ 55 ] 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

around the great world, and despotic institu- 
tions are less secure and absolute; the progress 
of liberty throughout the great world is more 
rapid and sure by reason of what he wrought. 
The nations of the world are nearer unto God 
because he lived; the human race itself has 
been lifted heavenward toward the gates of 
mingled gold and pearl that wait to swing on 
silent hinges into the age of freedom and uni- 
versal peace." 

"I praise him not; it were too late; 

And some innative weakness there must be 

In him who condescends to victory 
Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, 
Safe in himself as in a fate. 

So always firmly he : 
He knew to bide his time, 

And can his fame abide, 
Still patient in his simple faith sublime. 

Till the wise years decide. 
Great captains, with their guns and drums, 

Disturb our judgment for the hour, 
But at last silence comes ; 

These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, 
Our children shall behold his fame. 

The kindly-earnest, brave, farseeing man. 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 

New birth of our new soil, the first American." 
[ 56 ] 



SIX HUNDRED COPIES OF THIS BOOK 
WERE PRINTED AT THE PRESS OK 
WOOD AND WOOD. LOS ANGELES 
UNDER DIRECTION OF EARLE C. WOOD 
AUGUST, NINETEEN HUNDRED SIXTEEN 



